David Cameron: Scrap the Human Rights Act

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Cameron: Human Rights Act 'has to go'

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Learco Chindamo

By Christopher Hope and Caroline Gammell

12:01AM BST 22 Aug 2007

David Cameron last night called for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped outright for the first time amid mounting anger that the controversial law had allowed the killer of the head teacher Philip Lawrence to escape deportation.

The Conservative leader accused the Government of being "blind" to the Act's failings as it emerged that Home Office officials still regarded Italian-born Learco Chindamo as a threat to the public.

Mr Cameron's call came on a day of high emotion as Mr Lawrence's widow, Frances, said the legislation, which was adopted by the Labour Government in 2000, was "rotten at the core".

Concerns over the decision to allow Chindamo - who is due to be considered for parole early next year - to remain in Britain were heightened when official papers handed to the courts by the Home Office showed he posed a "genuine and present risk" to the public.

However, last night Downing Street said that Gordon Brown would not alter the legislation. A spokesman said: "The Government has made its position clear many times."

The Human Rights Act has been widely criticised and has led to the Government suffering a number of high-profile setbacks, notably in its failed attempts to deport terrorism suspects.

In his most explicit remarks on the legislation, Mr Cameron said: "It has to go. Abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, which sets out rights and responsibilities. The fact that the murderer of Philip Lawrence cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense.

"It is a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country. What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence? The problem for this Government is that the Human Rights Act is their legislation and they appear to be blind to its failings."

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "The Government are trying to blame the courts but they signed up to the EU law in question and continue to cede the powers to deal with dangerous individuals like this to Brussels."

Tory sources said a new Bill of Rights would be high on the agenda if the party won the next general election, replacing the Human Rights Act on the statute book.

This year, the Tories appointed a panel of lawyers under Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney general, to draw up a new Bill of Rights.

Mr Lawrence, 48, was stabbed to death outside St George's Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale, west London, in December 1995, while trying to protect a 13-year-old pupil.

A gang of 12 youths led by Chindamo attacked a boy who had quarrelled with a pupil of Filipino origin. Chindamo punched and stabbed the father of four, who died that evening.

An Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruled on Monday - the day before what would have been Mr Lawrence's 60th birthday - that Chindamo should be allowed to stay in Britain at the end of his sentence.

Last night official papers handed to the courts by the Home Office showed that Chindamo posed a "genuine and present risk" to the public. He was rated as the highest level of risk because of his notoriety, and would also need to be excluded from certain parts of the country, the documents disclosed.

Home Office officials submitted a letter to the tribunal showing Chindamo had "overeacted" to situations on several occasions and predicted it would be extremely difficult to find him somewhere to live on release.

"It was considered that he posed a continuing risk to the public and that his offences were so serious that he represents a genuine and present and sufficiently serious threat to the public in principle as to justify his deportation," the letter said. Other papers showed that the crux of the case for the tribunal rested on Article 8 of the European Human Rights Act - the right to a family life.

Lawyers for Chindamo claimed that sending him back to Italy would be disproportionate. His links to family were "fundamentally important". The Home Office is appealing against the decision.

Yesterday, Mrs Lawrence attacked the Human Rights Act for allowing Chindamo to "pick and choose" how to live his life. She said: "Chindamo went beyond the law and the Human Rights Act, taking away the most fundamental right of all, my husband's right to life. But then he was allowed to pick and choose from it to help him continue his life the way he wants it.

"I am passionate about the Human Rights Act, but over the last year I have felt more and more there was something rotten at the core."

Speaking outside her home in Ealing, west London, she continued: "The decision not to deport him came as a surprise. I had always been told he would be deported and I felt devastated. It is another example of how the law seems to have by-passed humanity. There seems to be a schism between lawyers and men and women in the community.

"The Human Rights Act does not seem to have a relationship between law and morality. The law now exists as a kind of character in the play that is life, putting human concerns to the side."

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who was home secretary when the legislation was drawn up, yesterday spoke to Mrs Lawrence by telephone and arranged to see her next week.

He said he had believed Chindamo would be deported.

"We are very vigorously appealing this," Mr Straw said. "It was not our expectation that this man would be open to live in this country on his release."

"I have not yet been able to see the judgment. What I have been able to glean is that it is very probable that most of this issue arises not from the Human Rights Act but from European Union law.

Mr Straw told Channel 4 News: "I feel misled, too, because I set the original tariff of 12 years on the recommendation of the Lord Chief Justice in 2001 and there was a clear expectation that this man, given the severity of the crime he committed, would indeed be deported to Italy.

"I think we were misled by the system."

He said the Human Rights Act was a "subsidiary" factor in the tribunal's decision and he doubted whether it made "any difference at all".